


after the disco

by samarqand



Series: small Makalaurë stories [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mereth Aderthad, Pre-Slash, linguistic prejudice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28818612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samarqand/pseuds/samarqand
Summary: Mereth Aderthad, and two conversations about Maglor’s accented Sindarin.
Relationships: Daeron/Maglor | Makalaurë
Series: small Makalaurë stories [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084430
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	after the disco

**Author's Note:**

> Warm-up writing from tumblr. Thanks to [SkyEventide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyEventide) for encouraging me to make this ficlet's terrible working title into the actual title. 
> 
> Someday I'll stop dancing around the fact that I want to write a full-fledged fic about linguistic hegemonies and prejudices in Middle-earth, but until then:

**AFTER**

Maglor slips out the doors and away from the din of revelry. 

He turns to find Fingon and Maedhros perched upon the stone railing, attention not to the glassy Pools of Ivrin below, but on him, expectantly.

“What happened?” Maglor asks warily.

“What happened to the music we expected?” Fingon counters.

“Daeron was too daunted by Makalaurë’s skill to try at his lute again,” Maedhros supplies, briefly slipping back into Quenya after drinking, singing, and practicing politics in Sindarin.

“Daeron has retired for the night,” Maglor says.

Fingon looks caught ready to laugh. “Already!” He looks out at the night’s idyll. “Prickly fellow.”

“Let him be,” Maedhros says, finishing off his wine to punctuate his declaration. “If diplomacy hurts his head, he will be composing a song about it now.” He turns a smile to his brother. “As I have learned in my studies of this one.”

Maglor tips up his chin. “So shall I compose a ditty to the tune of your teasing?”

“Of what did you speak?” Maedhros asks, abrupt. 

Maglor recognizes the question’s significance.

They together navigate the crumbling common ground tended with Doriath, after all. After all, they together have raised bloodied blades against kinsmen at the water’s edge. The flames illuming their faces had given their sins no cover; the truth was not too far out, though they had made to abandon it on the shore. Steadily, truth’s tread took it inland: hushed anecdotes, missives listing lost lives. 

_Of what did you speak_ , Maedhros asks, because it is only a matter of time before Doriath would know it, and would speak of it. 

“Or of what did you sing?” Fingon pipes up.

“Daeron did not find my accent pleasing enough to abide for so long as a song,” Maglor says.

Maedhros and Fingon give him a look. 

“ _Your_ accent?” Maedhros disdains.

“The ingrate!” Fingon drops his voice to a whisper.

Maglor laughs, voice soothing, “Raise no hackles; it matters little.”

“Then I will sing with my dear cousin and his accent,” Fingon announces, and rushes away to his accommodations to fetch his harp.

“Of what did he speak, Káno?” Maedhros asks. He is inured to the bite of ill tidings by now; he expects it as a matter of course.

So Maglor smiles his reassurance. “Shall I recount our conversation by the minute, or from mundane to most titillating?”

Maedhros smiles; a scar on his cheek reddens, bestowing a sharp resolve upon him humbling to behold.

His return to them is an event closely felt still in the latticework of injury, the hard undercurrent in Maedhros’ mien. His return, spread out gaunt and lacerated on the healer’s bed with a haunted stare and his remaining hand outflung to grasp for Fingon, for Maglor: scarcely believing that he had been delivered, had resurrected, would see again reasons to smile.

Maedhros smiles, yes. 

They turn toward the sound of Fingon’s footsteps: a tenacious march upon the stone floors.

“We spoke little, really,” Maglor reflects. 

Maedhros considers this; Fingon vaults back with his harp. 

Fingon’s harp and Maglor’s words meander through a tune ad hoc and free -- beauteous for how it heeds not the night's waning stars, nor the dim inevitability of morning. It is a song brimming with promise of more.

Maedhros lies along the railing, watching them.

Sometimes he smiles, yes.

*

**BEFORE**

“Would that I had not already packed my harp away,” Maglor says when Mablung has swifted toward the wine, relieving the two bards of bland diplomatic chatter. “I’d dearly love to accompany Daeron of Doriath on his lute. I might send for it -- ”

“No. Better not to draw an audience so late in the revels,” Daeron dismisses, clear and clipped. “In the wee hours, a crowd becomes entitled to talent. A crowd begins making _requests_.” 

The set of Daeron's jaw and mirthless line of his mouth suggest some long, gnawing dissatisfaction; he has stomped it down tonight that he might cajole his lute into eddies and swells of softer sentiments. But there, when his lips quirk their displeasure and the gleaming lamps catch heartsore shadows under his eyes, still it wraiths beneath his self-possession.

Maglor wouldn’t mind taking requests, but stays his petition to seek mutuality. “Then let us collaborate soon,” he hopes.

Daeron hums, noncommittal though attentive: his eyes linger on Maglor's lips, watching as keenly as he listens to the cadence of troubled Northern Sindarin smoothed by the lilt of Quenya. 

Made guileless from the wine and Daeron’s unmasked interest, Maglor fills Daeron's silence: "Should Doriath deign to grant us another such meeting."

“I do think we shall find each other again.” Daeron thumbs down the neck of his lute. “The way your accent weighs upon the silk of the Sindarin tongue. Yes, I should recognize it anywhere.”

Maglor considers the shape of that word, feeling for a caress or a barb: “A ' _weight_ ' welcome or burdensome, I wonder.”

“The weight of a Ñoldo's intrusion,” muses Daeron.

Maglor halts, affronted. He looks to the floor, expression closed as a cold gap drags out between them. When he glances back to Daeron, he receives only a languid smile.

“If my accent is such a maul to the tongue, perhaps I will spare you my Sindarin,” he offers. “Certainly my Quenya.” 

He means to decamp this rocky shoal amid the sea of friendly faces. He means to find Maedhros and Fingon in whatever fairer locale they have found past the crowds.

And yet: “Would a time spent free from the rule of words be such a sin?” Daeron asks then.

Maglor looks back to him. “Silence, too, speaks."

“And well I know it,” Daeron says, hefting his lute, slouching back against the wall, and picking an idle tune. 

"An instrumental conveys as meaningful a message as any we might utter,” Maglor remarks, though hushed now to catch the winging notes. 

“And yet without the clumsiness of lyrics,” says the scholar and bard, head bowed over the strings.

Maglor touches at an earring. “Shall I speak to you in the jingle of jewelry, then?”

Daeron lures a low rhythm from the strings.

"The raise of my brow?"

Daeron plucks a few wistful notes on his lute in answer.

Maglor smiles a little in spite of himself.

Daeron strums something gentle to describe it.


End file.
